Huang Rui (b. in 1952 in Beijing) is one of China’s most highly regarded artists. Huang Rui has a long standing practice of using text in his paintings in what he terms Language-Color where he references the scholarly traditions and classical texts in a contemporary reconstruct of Chinese traditions. Language-Color explores the relationship between text and color through language and visual experience. Since the 1990s, Huang Rui’s textual paintings have explored the relationship between text and color, increasing the focus on the visual attributes in the experience of painting as a modern-day literati artist. He incorporates the main tenets of simplicity and minimalism, expressive brushwork, symbolism and metaphor to convey deep meaning. He uses empty and negative space, harmony and
nature, allusion and poetry to convey a spiritual contemplation. In this exhibition, Huang Rui’s paintings “Four Purples”, he merges four classical texts with his feeling of the purple they describe for the viewer to resonate an emotional experience between the text and the color.